Dimensions: support: 178 x 230 x 14 mm
Copyright: © Tate | CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED, Photo: Tate
Editor: This is "Listening In" by Charles Spencelayh. The oil on panel depicts a man listening to headphones. It feels like a scene frozen in time; what do you see here? Curator: Notice how the room itself seems to be listening. Each object – the clock, the framed portraits, even the curios under glass – contributes to a sense of cultural memory being activated by this new technology. What stories do you think these objects might tell? Editor: I hadn't considered the objects as storytellers. It's as if the room is a collective unconscious! Curator: Precisely! Spencelayh masterfully captures how new technologies are immediately absorbed into our existing frameworks of meaning. It’s a fascinating meditation on how we imbue the modern world with the past. Editor: That’s really fascinating. I’ll never look at a painting the same way.
Comments
Join the conversation
Join millions of artists and users on Artera today and experience the ultimate creative platform.
Spencelayh grew up in Rochester. He trained at the South Kensington School (later renamed the Royal College of Art), and later in Paris. He made his debut at the Royal Academy in 1892 and continued to send pictures there for the next sixty-six years. Listening In shows an old man listening attentively to a modern wireless. The subject matter was typical of the artist whose obituarist said he mainly painted 'old codgers - the obsolete slang rises unbidden - in junk-crammed interiors that will be of considerable interest to the social historian of the future'. Gallery label, February 2004
CollectMore like this
